As the threat of recession loomed large over the economy of the US, a hue and cry has begun in that country demanding the corporate giants to create more jobs for locals. Most of the Americans feel that their MNCs have been outsourcing most of the jobs to foreign countries denying the opportunity to locals to take up jobs.

As the Americans are getting angry over bringing in employees of other countries into their country and creating more jobs abroad through outsourcing, most of the American companies are now planning to retain a small portion of the highly prized software jobs for the locals.

This could hit the Indian software giants such as the TCS, Infosys, Wipro and HCL to a considerable extent. Already reports indicated that GE, one of the leading MNCs of the US, has taken a policy decision to reduce outsourcing its IT work and announced plans to add 15,000 jobs in the US over the next three years, 1,100 of which will be at the Detroit IT centre. Presently, more than half of its IT work is outsourced.

Walmart, after dropping its decision to open its own captive technology centre in Bangalore, has decided to drive the development and design of its ecommerce platform from a new centre in Brisbane, California.

Senior executives of some US based firms revealed that the managements are under heavy pressure to shift high end technology jobs from India to the US. “Companies like GE are under heavy pressure to show they care for their locals,” the executives said.

Co-sourcing

A trend has emerged now in the IT employment sphere as vendors such as the TCS, Infosys, Wipro and HCL are forced to deal with co-sourcing which involves providing employment to people working with the customers. For example, HCL had to cope with inducting into its projects 9000 employees who were imposed on it by its customers.

Co-sourcing involves the transfer of a client’s workforce to the payroll of the vendor and it is meant to ensure job security to customers’ local workers who would then become part of multi-year outsourcing contracts.

This trend is going to hit hard companies like TCS, Wipro, Genpact, Patni Computer and MindTree.